A senior Labour MP has said that he wants to meet an Al-Qaeda radical who stabbed him but government “red tape” is getting in the way.

Sir Stephen Timms, a veteran backbencher and former minister, was attacked by Roshonara Choudhry at a constituency surgery in 2010. He has revealed that she has since written to him to apologise for the attack, and said that he “might” be able to forgive her if they ever meet.

The long-serving MP said that he had entered the restorative justice process, which involves bringing criminals and their victims together. Its aim is to help victims to get answers and allow offenders who are set to be released to take responsibility for their crimes and readjust to society.

But Sir Stephen told The Camilla Tominey Show on GB News that in his case “unfortunately, it seems to have stalled and I don’t know why”.

“It’s got stuck in red tape somewhere and it doesn’t seem to be moving forward at the moment,” he told the broadcaster. “I’m still hoping that somebody at the Ministry of Justice might finally get things moving and it might be possible but it hasn’t yet.”

Asked whether he would forgive her if they met, he replied: “It may well be possible but without some sort of communication I don’t think that would really mean anything.”

The police recently gave Sir Stephen three letters that Choudhry wrote to him from prison, where she is serving a life sentence for attempted murder. In the third and most recent one the Labour MP said that she apologised for the attack.

The “radicalised” student, who was 21 at the time, attacked him during a constituency surgery at Beckton Globe Library in his East Ham constituency.

Iraq War

She stabbed the former Treasury minister twice in the stomach with a six-inch kitchen knife because he voted for the Iraq War whilst serving under Sir Tony Blair.

Recalling the incident on May 14, 2010 he has said that he thought she was coming to shake his hand and at first “wasn’t sure she succeeded” in stabbing him. It was only when he got to the toilets and lifted his shirt that he saw “quite a lot of blood”.

Doctors told him his injuries were “life-threatening but not imminently life-threatening” and he spent five days in hospital after undergoing surgery.

Sir Stephen has previously said that the attack ultimately “strengthened” his relationship with Muslim constituents and that MPs mustn’t “disappear behind barriers”.

Two MPs have been murdered whilst holding constituency services in the past seven years.

Jo Cox, a Labour MP, was shot and stabbed multiple times whilst heading to a meeting in her Batley and Spen constituency, in West Yorkshire, in June 2016. Her attacker Thomas Mair, was a white supremacist who held far-Right views.

In October 2021 Sir David Amess, the Tory MP for Southend West, was stabbed and killed at a constituency surgery in Leigh-on-Sea, in Essex.